[Info-vax] Alpha Personal Workstation question

[Mazzini Alessandro]

That pdf was quite interesting, and I think that hints the reason why some 
256mb dimms are not working, and also why in some cases they get unstable if 
6 banks of such are fit... timing - refreshing issues. I'm suspecting that a 
new firmware would have fixed it (or at least improved it)


"John Wallace" <johnwallace4 at gmail.com> ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:a2b8da49-9faa-4c09-be2f-1a98dee4e92a at q3g2000vbc.googlegroups.com...
On Aug 10, 7:35 am, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> Paul Sture schrieb:
>
> > I am pretty sure price was an issue, even through to the XP900 / XP1000
> > era. The PWS systems (and later XP replacements) we had at work only had
> > 128 MB RAM and we were told that upgrading either was cost prohibitive.
>
> I found Alphas with less than 128MB almost unusable,
> at least with "modern" software, i.e. Tru64 >4.x
> and associated gfx apps.
> At the latest in the 2000s it should have been possible
> to offer those boxes with an amount of RAM which somehow
> reflects the capabilities of the 64bit CPU inside.
> At least there should have been an upgrade option > 4GB.
>
> > It's pity because the second hand PWS 600au with 512 MB I had at home
> > brought CDE up almost instantaneously when compared with the systems at
> > work.
>
> Yep, because nowadays even a hobbyist can afford RAM in the multi-GB
> region, but alas, most Alphas don't support so much RAM.
>
> >https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
>
> That's even the "real" CDE which has been open sourced.

"nowadays even a hobbyist can afford RAM in the multi-GB region, but
alas, most Alphas don't support so much RAM."

You might want to read the DTJ article I cited earlier:
http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/dtj/vol9num2/vol9num2art4.pdf

At the time systems like the PWS were being designed, the industry
(not just DEC) was rather different. Even if you don't understand the
more technical stuff in the article, perhaps it will mean something to
read that SDRAM (the technology underlying today's DRAM) hadn't really
taken off and it wasn't clear which technology was going to come next
after EDO DRAM (remember that?).

The section headed "Technology Choices" at the bottom of page 3 of the
PDF is relevant. Get the RAM technology choice wrong and you're
already dead in the water. RAMBUS was looking promising on paper, and
even got adopted in some places (e.g. away from Alpha, notably in high
end x86 workstations from Compaq), but turned out wrong in the market.
Hindsight is a great thing.

And the article also makes clear that extra pins on the custom ASICs
which the PWS used (extra pins such as might be needed to support a
wider address bus) can cost significant amounts of money, if you can't
sacrifice something else.

And then there's power and cooling, which in the PWS were already
dictated by the use of the PWSi (x86 box). Extra DIMMs = extra power
and cooling, or some sacrifice elsewhere.

According to the PWS Systems+Options chapters e.g. the one at
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/SOC/QB00SDPF.PDF
the Alpha PWS already had six DIMM slots versus the four DIMM slots in
the equivalent x86 PWSi systems from DEC's PCBU. Surely that would be
enough for most folk?

Back then, RAM was still quite expensive and Alpha's capability of a
64bit address space (without matching physical memory) was worth
something in itself; if you needed >32bits worth of physical memory it
could be done but would cost you and wasn't necessarily something lots
of people would be willing to pay for.

Bear in mind also that back then, some folk had already decided that
the future was Windows NT, and there was no prospect back then of a
64bit Windows NT, so who could ever want massive amounts of physical
memory in a near-commodity desktop box limited by a 32bit OS?

These days, having lots of memory is very trendy, not so much because
applications genuinely need it (even now, very few really do), but at
least in part because there is oversupply in the RAM market and has
been for years, and hence current generation RAM continues to be dirt
cheap even in the consumer market. Previous generation RAM may not be
quite so cheap.

There used to be oversupply in the disk market too, and then there
wasn't. It's looking like low end SSDs are going to be commoditized
soon; right now I'm looking at replacing an original 80GB hard drive
with something slightly bigger and I might as well use an SSD, given
the current state of hard drive prices.

Times change. Predictions are hard, predictions involving the future
are particularly hard (?).

Improvements are always possible, but the PWS family was imo quite a
respectable attempt at a commodity-technology Alpha box (sharing most
of its components with the equivalent Intel box). Would have been nice
if it had a "Halt" button, but the PCBU designed the box, and x86
boxes don't have Halt buttons.